Single NIC?

[div80]

Hi,

I am setting up a 2 node starwind (free edition) based hyper-v cluster for a small scale operation. The servers each have a 40G qsfp and which is about 4x our maximum theoretical raid array performance.

Is there any reason why using this single nic for sync/heartbeat/iscsi/cluster using vlans would be a problem?

Thanks.

[yaroslav (staff)]

Welcome to StarWind Forum. Using VLANs, teaming and any other form of network abstraction is highly not recommended by us https://www.starwindsoftware.com/best-p ... practices/. Having 2 NICs is a must (it can be an on-board 1 GB NIC just for StarWind Heartbeat); see more at https://www.starwindsoftware.com/system-requirements. 1 NIC is a problem due to the potential risk of split-brain (https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/w ... o-avoid-it) if the NIC malfunctions or drivers are carelessly installed.

[div80]

Hey Yaroslav,

Thanks a lot for your response.

So basically, 1) don't use any abstraction e.g. vlan and 2) there must be an independent nic for heartbeat to avoid split brain.

For 2) I will take your advice and use an onboard 1Gb nic.

For 1) considering the nic has so much more bandwidth than the storage can throw at it anyway, would there be any QoS issues with having Sync and iSCSI on the same nic with no vlan?

[yaroslav (staff)]

There can be performance issues or event sync drops.
We normally do not recommend doing that.